“Until lawmakers end the catch-and-release policies of the Obama
administration,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration
Studies, “any infrastructure improvements, new strategies, and better
metrics are pointless.”

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Project Veritas, found at James O'Keefe's Project
Veritas, has used the method of comparing voter registration files with jury
duty records, which we have been encouraging you to use, and the findings are
dramatic here in NC.

Many of you remember that thousands of illegal
aliens were found to be registered to vote in Georgia when the Atlanta Journal
Constitution newspaper and a local TV station compared jury duty and voter
registration records. We have been encouraging you to do the same over the last
year in ALIPAC's efforts to expose the massive voter registration and elections
fraud being perpetrated by illegal aliens in all American states!

We have
two breaking stories that will allow you to make major progress on this issue.
We will email you about the 180,000 suspected illegal voters found to be voting
in Florida tomorrow.

Today, please take the following quick
steps.

Step 1: Watch and understand the following video released by
Veritas Project

Step
2: Make a comment beneath the video, vote it thumbs up, add it to your
favorites, and then use e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and forum posts to circulate
this video far and wide across the nation.

Step 3: Assume that this story
will be censored by the national media unless major public activism takes place.
Therefore, do the legwork along with ALIPAC to send this video with
encouragement for action to ....

C. All of your local media including newspapers,
radio shows, and TV stations. Encourage them to report these findings and
replicate this research.

If enough Americans will do as we ask and keep
the ball rolling then you will have an opportunity to break through and get some
serious media coverage. Possibly there may even be legislation designed to stop
illegal immigrants from committing the felony of stealing your vote and your
voice!

To report your progress, questions, suggestions, etc.... please do
so at this activism tracking link....Video: Illegal Aliens Busted Voting in NC: Take Action to
Protect your Vote and State

REALITIES ON
THE MEXICAN INVASION, OCCUPATION and EVER EXPANDING MEX WELFARE STATE…. It’s
all about HISPANDERING for the ILLEGALS’ VOTES!

*

“On Thursday, the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, flatly predicted that Congress would not send an
immigration measure to the president this year. Mr. Boehner accused Democrats
of engaging in a “cynical ploy to try to engage voters, some segment of voters,
to show up in this November’s elections.”

Democrats
were hurt in the midterm election by low turnouts or faltering support from
voters who were young, black or female. But overwhelming
support from Hispanic voters appears to have helped elect Democratic
senators in Nevada, California, Colorado and possibly Washington State.
Hispanic voters may have kept the Senate in Democratic hands.

Several
Hispanic Republicans were also elected, including two governors, Brian Sandoval
of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and a senator, Marco Rubio of
Florida. But, over all, Hispanics voted at a rate of 2 to 1 for Democrats,
according to several polls, and many were stirred to action by viciously
anti-immigrant ads or comments made by Republican candidates.

Eligible
Hispanic voters represent about 9 percent of the national electorate, a slight
increase over previous years, but the percentages are much higher in the West,
climbing to 22 percent in California. They are less predictably partisan than
other ethnic groups and the two major parties have long contested for their
votes. Early polls had suggested that many were disappointed in both parties
for failing to act on immigration reform, and it appeared that they might sit
out the midterms.

Then came
a series of ads by Republican candidates like Sharron Angle, who was running
for the United States Senate in Nevada. One of hers depicted Hispanics sneaking
over the border, carrying weapons and appearing in police mug shots. Tom
Tancredo, whose anti-immigrant sentiment was already known, ran for governor of
Colorado by telling workers that their jobs were threatened by illegal
immigration. Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California,
pandered to the same sentiment by saying her former housekeeper, an illegal
immigrant, should have been deported.

Now
Hispanic political activists had galvanizing issues. Groups like Mi Familia Vota, La Raza and Lulac spent the last weeks of
the campaign organizing voters against these diatribes. A tracking poll
conducted by Latino Decisions, a polling organization, found that the number of
very enthusiastic Hispanic voters shot up to 58 percent on Oct. 25 from 40
percent a month earlier.

As the
Hispanic electorate continues to grow faster than the overall population in the
years ahead, the 2010 election should be a useful lesson. Anti-immigrant
demagoguery occasionally works, as it did in a number of Republican victories
in Arizona this year. But more often it will produce an angry reaction among a
growing group of committed voters.

*

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

*

“PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”… does that mean assault the
legals of Arizona that must fend off the Mexican invasion, occupation, growing
criminal and welfare state, as well as Mex Drug cartels???

OBAMA TELLS ILLEGALS “PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”

Friends of ALIPAC,

Each day new reports come in from across the nation that
our movement is surging and more incumbents, mostly Democrats, are about to
fall on Election Day. Obama's approval ratings are falling to new lows as he
makes highly inappropriate statements to Spanish language audiences asking
illegal alien supporters to help him "punish our enemies."

*

The fastest growing political party in America is
NOT the tea baggers! It is the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA… “The Race”. ..
The House now as 90 members, nearly one-quarter, that are CONGRESSIONAL
HISPANIC CAUCUS pushing for AMNESTY, no e-verify, expanded sanctuary cities,
open borders, and illegals voting!

LaRaza Calls
For Boycott Against Free Speech

No surprise
here. Pulling the race/hate card again and using political correctness La Raza
goes after cable shows reporting on illegal immigration.

"Murguía said she recognized that ultimately the power to change the
debate lies with the Hispanic community itself. “Latinos buy products from the
advertisers supporting these programs,” she said. “Latinos vote in primaries
and in the general election. We have a significant role to play picking winners
and losers in both arenas. We need to make it clear to those who embrace hate
that they do so at their own economic and political peril.”

Which brings us to an
extraordinary matter of some urgency. Several weeks before the White House and
its Senate allies announced their big "breakthrough" legislation
(S.1348), radicals in the House quietly introduced legislation to pump $5
million directly into La Raza next year — and $10 million per year for "each
fiscal year thereafter."

*

"This country
belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common
teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is
taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational
program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA
$800,000.00 in March of 2009!

“Through love of having children,
we are going to take over.” AUGUSTIN
CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY

*

The National Council of La Raza
(NCLR) is not only one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful militant
organizations in the country, it is also notoriously racist and subversive.
The group's name, "La Raza," means "The Race," by which
they are referring to ethnic Mexicans, or more broadly to "hispanics"
or "latinos." And it is quite clear from their decades of vitriolic
rhetoric — both spoken and written — that the La Raza activists are trying to
engender not only race consciousness amongst hispanic U.S. citizens and Mexican
migrants, but also racial militancy and animosity toward "Gringo
America."

The NCLR grew out of the La
Raza Unida (The Race United) Party and the Southwest Council of La Raza in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. The key leaders were Marxist-Leninist followers of
Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra.

*

MAYOR ANTONIO “TACO RUNT”
VILLARAIGOSA OF LOS ANGELES IS A LONG STANDING MEMBER OF THE MEX FASCIST PARTY
OF M.E.Ch.A.

IN LOS ANGELES, 47% OF THOSE WITH A
JOB ARE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SSI. THE COUNTY PAYS OUT $600 MILLION IN WELFARE
TO ILLEGALS!!! THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR CHARACTERIZES LOS ANGELES AS THE
MEX GANG CAPITAL OF AMERICA!

The radical student group
MEChA (Moviemento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), with which NCLR has been
closely allied for several decades, is even more explicitly and militantly,
having adopted the slogan, "Por La Raza Todo, Fuera de La Raza Nada,"
which translated means: "For the Race, Everything; Outside the Race,
Nothing."

MEChA's founding documents and
literature are replete with appeals to "La Raza de Bronce" (The
Bronze Race) and condemnation of the "brutal gringo." MEChA, as its
name suggests, is also a leading promoter of the radical
"reconquista" (reconquest) movement, a plan of to take over the states
of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas — a region they refer
to as "Aztlan" — which they claim was stolen from the
"Aztecan" peoples. NCLR provides major financial support to MEChA and
many of NCLR's leaders were MEChA leaders in their college days.

*

FIFTEEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA “THE RACE”

by Michelle Malkin

(get Malkin’s book on
OBAMA NOTED below!)

Only in America could critics of a group called "The
Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity
chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in
redefining all opposition as "hate."

Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in
San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the
Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race." Can
you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who
called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media
have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and
marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that
the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars
and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.

*

Here are 15 things you should know about "The
Race":

*

15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for
illegal aliens.

*

14."The Race" demands in-state tuition discounts
for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens
and law-abiding legal immigrants.

11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds
from entering immigration information into a key national crime database -- and
to prevent local police officers from accessing the data.

*

10. "The Race" opposed the state of Oklahoma's
tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal
aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal
cooperation and information sharing.

7. "The Race" has consistently opposed post-9/11
national security measures at every turn.

*

6. Former "Race" president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary
Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S. English is to
Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was referring to U.S.
English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to
preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States.
"The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised
the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding
the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."

*

5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a
poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP
Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as "a radical
racist group … one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has
permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a
racist nation out of the American West."

*

4. "The Race" is currently leading a smear
campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has called for TV
and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the
airwaves -- in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up
their foes. The New York Times reported that current "Race" president
Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated,
even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights."

*

3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic nationalist
charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in
federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz.,
the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School
in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose
principal inveighed: "We don't want to drink from a White water fountain,
we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain
in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water fountain … ultimately the White
way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually
lead to our own destruction."

*

2. "The Race" has perfected the art of the PC
shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan
standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage
counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and
partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.

*

1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy -- and
the elite sheeple's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor
Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very nomenclature 'The
National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the
contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the
meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' -- and that's precisely why we
don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would
not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."

*

The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La
Raza.

*

LA
RAZA – “THE (MEXICAN) RACE”….

THE
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA

1126
16th Street, N.W.

Washington,
D.C.

202-785
1670

Get
on La Raza’s email list to find out what this fascist party is doing to expand
the Mexican occupation. NCLR.org

FOR
THE EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, AND MEXICAN SUPREMACY

LA
RAZA is the virulently racist political party for ILLEGALS (only Mexicans) and
the corporations that benefit from illegals, and the employers of illegals. IT
IS ILLEGAL TO HIRE AN ILLEGAL.

LA
RAZA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA and has contempt for AMERICANS,
AMERICAN LAWS, AMERICAN LANGUAGE, AMERICAN BORDERS, and the AMERICAN FLAG.

However
LA RAZA does like the AMERICAN WELFARE SYSTEM. The welfare system in the
country is so good that Mexico has dumped 38 million of their poor, illiterate
, criminal and frequently pregnant over our border.

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

*

Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed
in their communities around the country. While most of the population of
California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by
Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.

REALITY: FROM HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE, WALL ST-OWNED BARACK
OBAMA HAS SERVICED THEM ON HANDS AND KNEES USING THE SAME OBAMA PARADIGM OF
PROTECTING THE CRIMINAL MANAGEMENT OF THESE BIG BUSINESSES, AND MAKING SURE THE
EMPLOYEES GOT THE SHAFT BIG TIME!

IN A PERFECT LA RAZA MOMENT, OBAMA WOULD HAVE HIS HORDES OF
ILLEGALS IN EACH AND EVERY JOB TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED TO THIRD-WORLD LEVELS.
OBAMA HAS SABOTAGED E-VERIFY AROUND THE NATION TOIMPLEMENT THIS!

OBAMA – HE’S A WALKING CON JOB!

*

THIS IS OBAMA’S REAL BAILOUT OF
G.M.:

“The record profits owe
largely to the cuts imposed on auto workers in the United States and Canada,
under the auspices of the United Auto Workers and Canadian Auto Workers unions,
including a new starting wage of barely $14 an hour, half the basic wage for
longtime workers, and cuts in health benefits, pensions and health care for
retirees.”

GM posts record profits, prepares
more cuts

By Patrick Martin
18 February 2012

General
Motors reported a record $7.6 billion profit for 2011 Thursday, but the largest
US automaker made clear that it would continue to pursue cuts in jobs, wages
and benefits for its worldwide workforce, with the direct assistance of the
United Auto Workers.

It
was the eighth consecutive quarterly profit for the company since its forced
bankruptcy in 2009, but the smallest during that period, a signal that further
cost-cutting measures will be demanded by the financial markets. Worldwide
revenues rose 11 percent to $150.3 billion, but profits soared 62 percent
compared to 2010.

GM
was fueled by record pretax profits of $7.2 billion in North America. Asian
operations also posted a significant profit, about $1.8 billion, but GM lost
money in South America and particularly Europe, where its subsidiaries have
accumulated losses of $14 billion since 1999.

Global
sales rose 7 percent to 9.03 million vehicles, putting GM once again in first
place, surpassing Toyota. But fourth quarter revenue was only $500 million, or
28 cents a share, significantly below analyst expectations, which averaged 42
cents a share.

Chairman
and CEO Dan Akerson—whose own salary and bonus approach $10 million—hailed the
results of 2011, which included cost-cutting measures that had the effect of
“reducing our break-even level in Europe and South America and driving higher
revenues around the world.”

The record profits owe
largely to the cuts imposed on auto workers in the United States and Canada,
under the auspices of the United Auto Workers and Canadian Auto Workers unions,
including a new starting wage of barely $14 an hour, half the basic wage for
longtime workers, and cuts in health benefits, pensions and health care for
retirees.

While
the company made a $7.2 billion profit in North America, nearly $150,000 for
every one of its 47,500 US production workers, these workers will receive a
derisory $7,000 in profit-sharing checks in March.

No sooner than it broke its
previous record for profits, than the company announced a new attack on
white-collar workers.
GM said Wednesday it would freeze its pension plan for 19,000 US workers hired
before 2001, shifting them to a 401(k) plan with a defined contribution and no
guaranteed benefit. Salaried workers
hired after 2001 are already denied a pension. The company will also
institute annual bonuses rather than pay increases for its 26,000 salaried
employees.

GM
spokesmen emphasized the company’s focus on improving margins in its European
operations, which lost $727 million last year. Last month Akerson placed Vice
Chairman Steve Girsky in charge of the European management board, and shifted a
group of US-based executives across the Atlantic.

Particularly
critical will be the role of United Auto Workers President Bob King, who is to
be named to the supervisory board of GM’s German subsidiary, Adam Opel AG,
according to a report Monday in the German publication Handelsblatt. The
supervisory board has 20 seats divided equally between GM management and the IG
Metall union, which will nominate King as one of its representatives.

Press
coverage of the King nomination suggested that his selection was “another sign
of how serious the Detroit automaker is about restructuring Opel,” the Detroit
News observed. “The company is reportedly working on a major restructuring
of Opel and its broader European business that will likely entail plant
closings and significant concessions from unions—the same sort of concessions
that GM won from the UAW during the economic crisis in the United States.”

The
Detroit Free Press headlined the same decision: “GM putting new team in
charge of Europe; UAW President Bob King to join Opel board.” As the title
demonstrates, King is regarded as an integral part of the GM “team” that will
spearhead the company’s cost-cutting drive at its German subsidiary.

Reuters
news agency put it even more bluntly, reporting the selection of King under the
headline, “As Opel losses mount, GM seeks union-backed cuts.” The article noted
that an IG Metall leader visited King in Detroit before his appointment,
confirming that the German trade union executives are joining forces with their
American counterparts and the corporate bosses to gang up against the workers
on both continents.

The
most likely outcome of these backroom consultations is a decision to close
several GM plants in Europe, most likely the Opel plant at Bochum in the Ruhr,
with 3,100 workers, and the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port near Liverpool in
Britain’s blighted industrial northwest, with 2,100 workers.

The
collaboration of the unions is essential to GM to strangle resistance from the
workers. An analyst for HIS Global Insight wrote Wednesday, in a research note,
that the shakeup in GM’s European leadership “would indicate that the company
is foreseeing some major industrial unrest as a result of the expected
restructuring plan.”

Under
the impact of the global financial collapse and the crisis in the euro zone,
car sales have fallen 15 percent in 2011 compared with 2007 and are projected
to decline another 6 percent this year.

“There
is increasing frustration with Opel and a feeling that the cuts two years ago
did not go nearly deep enough,” one company official told the Wall Street
Journal. “If Opel is going to get fixed, it is going to get fixed now and
cuts are going to be deep.”

Plant
closings resulting from Monday’s forced bankruptcy of General Motors will cause
spiraling unemployment and deep cuts in social services in many cities and
states across the country. The Obama administration, whose Auto Task Force
dictated the terms of the bankruptcy, has offered no serious aid to the
affected workers and their communities.

GM
is carrying out at least 21,000 job cuts and the closure of 14 plants and
warehouses in eight states. In addition, the company has announced its
intention to dump franchise agreements with 2,300 dealerships by the end of
next year. Many of these will be forced to close, eliminating as many as
100,000 jobs in all 50 states.

The
gutting of GM, once the most powerful corporation in the world and a symbol of
US industrial might, will send shock waves through the economy, cascading into
more layoffs at parts suppliers and financial ruin for thousands of small
businesses.

The
bankruptcy will immediately result in state and local cuts in social services,
health care and education, with city and state workers targeted for layoffs,
wages cuts and other concessions. It will accelerate the foreclosure crisis and
further drive down home prices, as tens of thousands of workers are no longer
able to meet their mortgage payments.

The
Obama administration is using the concessions and layoffs, agreed to by the
United Auto Workers, to attack the wages and benefits of the entire working
class. Corporations will take the concessions imposed on auto workers as a
signal for similar measures against their own workers.

The
state of Michigan, which already has the highest unemployment rate in the
nation at 12.9 percent, will bear the brunt of the closures, with 42 percent of
all national GM layoffs taking place there. Nearly 9,000 jobs will be lost in
Michigan from Monday’s announced plant closures. The shutdowns are concentrated
in southeast Michigan. They will be carried out in Flint, Livonia, Orion
Township, Pontiac and Ypsilanti Township. On Friday, 700 workers were laid off
when GM shuttered a stamping plant in Grand Rapids, in southwest Michigan.

It
is estimated that since 2000, Michigan has lost 17 percent of its jobs—about
three quarters of a million in all—as a direct result of the crisis in the auto
industry. Now the state anticipates 520,000 job losses this year and next.

The
consequences for the state’s limited social welfare system will be disastrous.
According to one estimate, Michigan could lose an additional $18.3 billion in
income. It already faces a $3 billion two-year budget shortfall, and officials
recently revised downward their revenue estimate for the 2010 fiscal year by
$1.7 billion, calling for an across-the-board spending cut of 8 percent.

“It’s
clearly going to impact the safety net,” Governor Jennifer Granholm warned.
“People, who are hurting, need services more, and we have fewer dollars.”
Michigan has already carried out $300 million in budget cuts for the current
fiscal year.

Oakland
County in suburban Detroit will lose three factories and 6,600 jobs, the most
of any county. Oakland County was already in difficult financial straits due to
declining property tax revenue, a result of layoffs and the foreclosure crisis.
The loss of GM-related tax revenue will result in layoffs for county workers
and sharp cuts in social programs, said Bob Daddow, Oakland County’s deputy
executive. “I will be going to war,” Daddow told the Detroit News. “We
will need to make cuts in all departments. We have been doing these cuts all
along...but the worst is yet to come on governmental revenues.”

The
closure of the GM Truck and Bus plant will deepen the social crisis in
impoverished Pontiac, Michigan. About 1,100 workers will lose their jobs, and
the city will lose 20 percent of its current tax base, or $10 million, said
Fred Leeb, the city’s emergency financial manager. Leeb made clear that
Pontiac’s working class would pay the price for the shutdown. “We fear that we
are going to have to cut even more deeply,” he told the Detroit News.
“And there will be concessions to ask from the (city) unions.”

Flint,
Michigan has lost about 50,000 GM jobs in 30 years. One thousand more were
added to the grim tally when GM said Monday it would close its Powertrain Flint
North plant. Monday night, the Flint City Council met to enact a series of
measures to bridge a $13 million budget deficit, including the layoff of about
90 firefighters and police and the shuttering of a fire station.

The
city of Livonia, an inner-ring suburb of Detroit, will lose its GM engine
plant, and with it $474,000 in annual tax revenue, about 1 percent of its
total. City workers have already been asked to accept pay cuts. The
Detroit-Livonia-Warren area had an unemployment rate of 14 percent as of May.

Ypsilanti’s
Willow Run transmission plant laid off 600 workers on Monday, and 500 more jobs
will be shed by December 2010. The township will lose 4.4 percent of its tax
revenue, and Washtenaw County will see a loss of $3.8 million in tax receipts.
The Ypsilanti Public Schools confront a $1.4 million deficit, which will be met
primarily through teacher layoffs. The city faces a budget deficit of almost a
half million dollars.

In
Livingston County, Michigan, the GM bankruptcy may lead to a number of parts
suppliers shutting down. Already hundreds of auto parts workers have lost their
jobs in recent months, according to the county’s Economic Development Council
director, Fred Dillingham. Metaldyne, which employs 100 workers in the county,
last week filed for bankruptcy protection. “We have a number of companies with
as much as 90 percent of their business from GM. We have an awful lot of
trickle-down effect from GM,” Dillingham told Livingston Community News.

The
closure of GM Mansfield in Ontario, Ohio is likely to result in the elimination
of city jobs and pay cuts for municipal employees. With revenues already down a
quarter million dollars, the city is bracing for disaster.

Spring
Hill, Tennessee, which has seen its Saturn plant idled, most likely to be
closed permanently, was a single-industry town. When GM opened the plant in
1990, fewer than 1,500 people lived there. Now it has 24,000 inhabitants.

The
collapse of the Big Three has brought with it a sharp decline in funding for
the arts and culture. The General Motors Foundation, which contributed $31.4
million to the arts in 2007, has told many art and cultural organizations,
“mostly in Detroit,” not to count on any contributions this year, the Financial
Times reported last week. Toledo, Ohio, recently announced that its
three-day jazz festival, the Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Festival, would be
cancelled this year after Chrysler said it would no longer provide $100,000 in
annual funding.

In the face of this mounting
social crisis, President Barack Obama has offered little more than rhetorical
palliatives, telling workers that their “sacrifices” will ensure the future for
coming generations. But for the auto workers’ children, the future foretells
poverty amidst a crumbling social safety net.

On Tuesday, Obama sent Edward
Montgomery, his director of recovery for auto communities and workers, along
with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, to tour a Romulus, Michigan GM plant that
thus far has not been slated for closure. This was followed by Solis’
appearance at a “worker round table” at Eastern Michigan University in
Ypsilanti, the ostensible purpose of which was to discuss the retraining of
workers for new jobs in the “green economy.”

The
meeting was little more than a media stunt organized by the Democratic Party
and UAW executives to present the Obama administration as a defender of jobs
and divert working class anger along nationalist lines.

In her remarks, Solis
outlined a series of “job training” programs that will supposedly equip workers
for new high-tech and environmentally-friendly industries. But as Solis and
Obama well know, these token programs cannot possibly provide decent employment
for the vast majority of the workers who are losing their jobs as a result of
the administration’s auto industry policy.

In
what is shaping up as the worst job market since the Great Depression, even
college graduates—many with degrees in engineering, computer science, robotics
and management—face the highest rate of unemployment for those with a four-year
degree in decades.

Among
the Obama administration initiatives Solis outlined was $49 million in
assistance to Michigan workers who have lost jobs due to “international trade,”
federal assistance for the weatherization of homes, and summer youth programs.
These are already existing programs. She could not announce any new programs to
deal with the social crisis created by the bankruptcy of GM because the Obama
administration has no plans for such programs.

After
Solis spoke, the panel discussion was turned over to a number of local
Democratic Party politicians and union officials. Don Skidmore, the Willow Run
UAW local president, set the “America first” tone, declaring, “We’ve got to
stop the bleeding of American jobs south of the border!” Another speaker
demanded to know why Toledo, Ohio was able to keep its GM engine plant open.

UAW
official Donnie Enersen denounced immigrant workers. “They’re coming into
America, not paying taxes, not paying into Social Security,” he said.

The
union officials are seeking to divide workers along national and even regional
lines, in order to deflect attention from their real enemies—the Obama
administration and the Wall Street financiers who are behind the carve-up of
GM.

The
World Socialist Web Site spoke with a small number of workers, most of
whom were recently retired, who came to the meeting to demonstrate against the
closure of the Willow Run plant. Corky, a GM worker with 12 years, said, “We
thought we were going to stay open until 2010. On Friday when we walked out of
work we thought we would be coming back in mid-July. I got a call from a fellow
worker that night saying we were no longer going to work there.

“It’s
unfair. We’ve made enough sacrifices. I’m tired of it. This was my seventh GM
plant. For two-and-a-half years I was driving down to Toledo, Ohio to work,
even when gas was $4 a gallon. I’ve made sacrifices. My dad is a retired GM
worker and his benefits are being cut. I put my blood and sweat into every
transmission that comes off the line.

“Yesterday
when they announced the bankruptcy and plant closing I was all tears and
emotions. Now I’m angry.”

*

Praise for Obamanomics

“The
notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of
progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by
day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative
muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big
business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs,
taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama
years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author

“‘Every time government gets
bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney
begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing
strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched
book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really
works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama

“Every
libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large
corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to
read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions
of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul

“It’s understandable for
critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney
shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately
punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to
notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The
Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History

*

·Hardcover: 256 pages

·Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30,
2009)

·Language: English

·ISBN-10: 1596986123

·ISBN-13: 978-1596986121

WHO
REALLY PAYS FOR THE CRIMES OF OBAMA’S WALL ST DONORS?

Obama prepares sweeping cuts in
social programs

8 January 2009

Barack
Obama took the occasion of his first press appearance in Washington as
president-elect to declare his determination to impose policies of budgetary
austerity, including the elimination of entire federal programs and
cost-cutting in the entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid that are of vital importance to tens of millions of elderly and poor
people.

Obama
announced his appointment of Nancy Killefer, a director at the management
consulting firm McKinsey & Co., to a new White House post of chief
performance officer. Killefer, a Treasury official in the Clinton
administration, will be in charge of setting performance standards for federal
agencies and enforcing them on agency officials. Those programs that fail to
meet these standards will be targeted for reorganization or elimination.

The
president-elect made the statement on the eve of a speech Thursday in which he
will make the case for a proposed stimulus package. It was a clear effort to
appease both congressional Republicans and the sizeable faction of fiscal
conservatives among the congressional Democrats, reassuring them that while
unlimited funds are to be provided to bail out big business, there will be a
tight rein on spending for programs that support the needs of working people.

Obama's remarks on Wednesday
shed light on the basic character of his stimulus plan, which is tailored to
the demands of the financial and corporate elite and will provide hundreds of
billions in additional public funds to prop up corporate profits, while doing
little to provide relief for tens of millions of working people facing the
deepest slump since the Great Depression.

Obama
noted the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate released Wednesday that
the federal deficit for the current fiscal year will top $1.2 trillion, without
counting any additional spending for the economic stimulus plan that the Obama
administration and Congress will enact after his inauguration. "Trillion
dollar deficits will be a reality for years to come," he warned, declaring
that containing the deficit and putting the lid on federal spending must become
"fundamental principles of government."

When
a reporter from the Wall Street Journal asked about Medicare and Social
Security, noting that these were among the largest federal expenditures, Obama
replied, "We are beginning consultations with members of Congress around
how we expect to approach the deficit. We expect that discussion around
entitlements will be a part, a central part, of those plans." He added
that once the stimulus package was adopted, by mid-February, "we will have
more to say about how we're going to approach entitlement spending."

These
remarks and comments by Democratic congressional leaders are a warning of what
is to come: a frontal assault on the most important components of what remains
of a social safety net in the United States—the programs that provide at least
minimal retirement benefits and medical coverage for tens of millions of
elderly people, as well as medical coverage for millions of low-income
families.

While
both Social Security and Medicare are solvent, currently taking in more tax
revenues than they pay out, the Social Security Trust Fund, which represents
the accumulated contributions of three generations of working people, has been
effectively plundered to pay for the Bush administration's tax cuts for the
wealthy, two wars and the immense US military establishment.

Out
of $10.7 trillion in total federal debt, about 40 percent, or $4.3 trillion, is
borrowed from Social Security. The Trust Fund is the largest holder of federal
debt, followed by US private investors, who hold $3.4 trillion, and foreign
investors, many of them governments, who hold $3 trillion.

The
CBO figure of $1.2 trillion likely underestimates the current year's deficit by
a significant amount. It includes nothing for the stimulus package which has
yet to be spelled out in detail by the incoming administration, and assumes no
emergency spending to finance Obama's promised buildup of US military forces in
Afghanistan. Reuters reported Wednesday that Obama's secretary of defense,
Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, is requesting an
additional $70 billion for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not
counting the additional cost of a doubling of US forces to some 60,000 in
Afghanistan.

The
CBO estimates that the US unemployment rate, at 6.7 percent in November, will
rise to 9 percent by the end of this year, although many economists project a
rate of 10 percent or more. Double-digit unemployment would drive up spending
on jobless benefits, food stamps and Medicaid, among other programs, swelling
the deficit even further.

The
CBO also placed the cost of the Treasury bailout of Wall Street at $180 billion
in 2009, although Congress is expected to authorize an additional $350 billion
on top of the $350 billion already expended since October. The bailout of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored mortgage finance
companies brought down by the subprime mortgage crisis, will add another $240
billion to the deficit.

Senate
Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, echoed
Obama's warning of trillion-dollar deficits for several years, as well as his
pledge to tackle long-term problems in the financing of Social Security and
Medicare. He told the press, "It would send a very healthy message to the
markets and the American people if President-elect Obama were to simultaneously
announce an economic recovery package and the beginning of a bipartisan process
to deal with our long-term imbalances."

House
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has close ties to the right-wing faction of
House Democrats, the so-called Blue Dogs, added his voice to the chorus calling
for long-term deficit-reduction measures, going so far as to suggest that the
Obama administration might have to follow the example of the Republican
administrations of the 1980s, when White House budget officials engaged in
across-the-board budget cuts by executive order, a process called "sequestering."

Congressional
Democrats opposed sequestering 20 years ago, pointing out that there was no
constitutional authority for such executive action without congressional
authorization. It is a measure of how far to the right the Democratic Party has
moved that one of its top leaders now embraces such a policy.

Robert
Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates
fiscal austerity, provided an indication of what is being contemplated, saying,
"I would analogize it to what the government is doing with the auto
companies. Congress said, we'll give you the money but you have to show us a
plan for sustainability." In return for emergency loans to the US auto
companies, Congress demanded tens of thousands of layoffs, the closure of dozens
of plants and draconian cuts in auto workers' wages and benefits.

Four
years ago, George W. Bush began his second term as president by proposing a
sweeping privatization of Social Security, a measure which was never formally
introduced in Congress due to overwhelming popular opposition. The plan was
quietly shelved after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the Bush
administration's gross incompetence and utter indifference to the plight of
poor and working class Americans. It has thus been left to Obama, who
occasionally postures as the heir of Franklin Roosevelt, to take responsibility
for dismantling the last legacy of the New Deal.

Toward the end of an important speech in Washington last month,
the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said to
her audience:

“Think of a teacher who is staying up past midnight to prepare her
lesson plan... Think of a teacher who is paying for equipment out of his own
pocket so his students can conduct science experiments that they otherwise
couldn’t do... Think of a teacher who takes her students to a ‘We, the People’
debating competition over the weekend, instead of spending time with her own
family.”

Ms. Weingarten was raising a cry against the demonizing of
teachers and the widespread, uninformed tendency to cast wholesale blame on
teachers for the myriad problems with American public schools. It reminded me of the way autoworkers have
been vilified and blamed by so many for the problems plaguing the Big Three
automakers.

But Ms. Weingarten’s defense of her members was not the most
important part of the speech. The key point was her assertion that with schools
in trouble and the economy in a state of near-collapse, she was willing to
consider reforms that until now have been anathema to the union, including the
way in which tenure is awarded, the manner in which teachers are assigned and
merit pay.

It’s time we refocused our lens on American workers and tried to
see them in a fairer, more appreciative light.

Working men and women are not getting the credit they deserve for
the jobs they do without squawking every day, for the hardships they are
enduring in this downturn and for the collective effort they are willing to
make to get through the worst economic crisis in the U.S. in decades.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate this month, the president of
the United Auto Workers, Ron Gettelfinger, listed some of the sacrifices his
members have already made to try and keep the American auto industry viable.

Last year, before
the economy went into free fall and before any talk of a government rescue, the
autoworkers agreed to a 50 percent cut in wages for new workers at the Big
Three, reducing starting pay to a little more than $14 an hour.

That is a development that the society should mourn. The U.A.W.
had traditionally been a union through which workers could march into the
middle class. Now the march is in the other direction.

Mr. Gettelfinger noted that his members “have not received any
base wage increase since 2005 at G.M. and Ford, and since 2006 at Chrysler.”

Some 150,000 jobs
at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have vanished outright through downsizing
over the past five years. And like the members of Ms. Weingarten’s union (and
other workers across the country, whether unionized or not), the autoworkers
are prepared to make further sacrifices as required, as long as they are
reasonably fair and part of a shared effort with other sectors of the society.

We need some perspective here. It is becoming an article of faith
in the discussions over an auto industry rescue, that unionized autoworkers
should be taken off of their high horses and shoved into a deal in which they
would not make significantly more in wages and benefits than comparable workers
at Japanese carmakers like Toyota.

That’s fine if it’s agreed to by the autoworkers themselves in the
context of an industry bailout at a time when the country is in the midst of a
financial emergency. But it stinks to high heaven as something we should be
aspiring to.

The economic downturn, however severe, should not be used as an
excuse to send American workers on a race to the bottom, where previously
middle-class occupations take a sweatshop’s approach to pay and benefits.

The U.A.W. has been criticized because its retired workers have
had generous pensions and health coverage. There’s
a horror! I suppose it would have been better if, after 30 or 35 years on the
assembly line, those retirees had been considerate enough to die prematurely in
poverty, unable to pay for the medical services that could have saved them.

Randi Weingarten and Ron Gettelfinger know the country is going
through a terrible period. Their workers, like most Americans, are already
getting clobbered and worse is to come.

But there is no downturn so treacherous that it is worth
sacrificing the long-term interests — or, equally important — the dignity of
their members.

Teachers and autoworkers are two very different cornerstones of
American society, but they are cornerstones nonetheless. Our attitudes toward
them are a reflection of our attitudes toward working people in general. If we
see teachers and autoworkers as our enemies, we are in serious need of an
attitude adjustment.

…………….

Wsws.org

Pay cuts,
layoffs mount in US (and watch how the politicians bust their ass solely for
the corporate interests, i.e., massive welfare for the bankers that caused this
meltdown, but NO help for those foreclosed on!)

By Tom Eley
23 December 2008

The US
government loans to the auto industry, conditioned on a massive attack on the
wages and jobs of auto workers, are being used as a spearhead for broader
attacks on the working class throughout the country. This attack has already
begun, with numerous companies recently announcing pay cuts and layoffs for the
coming year in response to the deepening economic crisis.

Many of the new pay cuts affect salaried positions. While cuts to the pay
packages of top executives are largely designed to lend the impression of “shared
sacrifice,” the salaries and pensions of wider layers of managerial and
professional personnel—a large component of the US “middle class”—are being
significantly reduced.

On December 18, FedEx Corp., one of the largest US parcel delivery services,
announced plans to cut pay for more than 35,000 salaried employees. It will
also indefinitely freeze its contributions to over 140,000 employee 401(k)
retirement accounts. In announcing the pay cuts, Frederick W. Smith, FedEx
founder and CEO, said that the corporation was “being challenged by some of the
worst economic conditions in the company’s 35-year history.” Only one month ago
the third largest US parcel delivery service, German-owned DHL, announced the
suspension of its US operations and layoffs totaling 9,500 workers.

Caterpillar, the leading manufacturer of construction vehicles, has
announced pay cuts ranging between 15 percent and 50 percent for all levels of
management. It is also offering voluntary buyouts to its American workforce
until January 12. Last week, Caterpillar announced 814 layoffs from its
Mossville, Illinois, engine factory.

On Monday, Kemet Corp., a digital parts maker based in North Carolina, said
it would cut pay for salaried employees by 10 percent percent beginning January
1 and will indefinitely suspend contributions to its 450 workers’ 401(k)
retirement plans. It will also make permanent cuts to insurance benefits for
its retirees and fire 1,500 workers in China, Europe, and Mexico, the Greenville
News reported.

Last week, Motorola Inc. announced plans to freeze salaries and suspend
payments to employee retirement accounts, and Agilent Technologies Inc. said it
will cut pay by 10 percent for its global workforce of 20,000. Atlas World
Group Inc., the second largest US moving and storage company, based in
Evansville, Indiana, said it would cut the pay of its salaried personnel by 5
percent across the board.

On December 16, the nation’s largest electronics and appliance retailer,
BestBuy, tendered buyout offers to virtually its entire corporate workforce.
The Minnesota-based corporation has seen a sharp decline in sales and profits.
Rival Circuit City filed for bankruptcy in early November.

The take backs have emerged as a widespread trend. According to a New
York Times report published December 21, “a growing number of
employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day
workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with
wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules. These employers are
still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.”

“The rolls of companies nipping at labor costs with measures less drastic
than wholesale layoffs include Dell (extended unpaid holiday), Cisco (four-day
year-end shutdown), Motorola (salary cuts), Nevada casinos (four-day workweek),
Honda (voluntary unpaid vacation time) and The Seattle Times (plans to save $1
million with a week of unpaid furlough for 500 workers). There are also many
midsize and small companies trying such tactics,” the Times
reported.

Similar measures are being carried out by state and municipal governments,
and by colleges and universities.

The city of Galveston, Texas, has demanded a 3 percent pay cut from its
municipal workforce of more than 700. The city faces a current budget shortfall
of $3.6 million, which is expected to expand by about $2 million when in April
property tax appraisals are expected to show a sharp decline in revenue.

Tehama County in California has ordered a pay freeze for its employees, and
has indicated it will also furlough workers in the coming months.

(CA PUTS OUT $20 BILLION PER YEAR IN SOCIAL
SERVICES TO ILLEGALS! EVERY MEXIFORNIA DEM WANTS NO BORDERS, AMNESTY, NO I.D.
REQUIREMENTS THAT MIGHT TROUBLE VOTING ILLEGALS, NO E-VERIFY, WHICH HAS NOW
BEEN OUTLAWED IN CA, AND MUCHO DREAM ACTS TO INDUCE MORE ILLEGALS TO CLIMB OUR
BORDERS)

The state of California, which faces an acute budget crisis, has ordered a
new round of pay cuts and layoffs. On Thursday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
issued an Executive Order calling for mandatory furloughs of two days per month
for state workers beginning in February and lasting through June of 2010.

The Pennsylvania State University system recently joined the large number of
colleges and universities that have enacted pay as well as hiring freezes,
canceling job searches for vacant positions. The cancellation of numerous
academic job searches, coupled with growing numbers of professors delaying
retirement due to declines in their retirement accounts, have combined to
create one of the worst job markets for recent PhDs in years.

Analysts consider pay cuts and hiring freezes as a first response for many
companies to the economic crisis. A survey carried out by the labor relations
firm Mercer in early November—well before the full brunt of the financial
crisis had registered in the real economy—found that 35 percent of 1,028
companies it surveyed are planning “significant” workforce reductions in 2009,
and that most “are likely to curtail overall hiring, [and] reduce 2009 salary
increases and cut bonus payouts.”

Patricia A. Milligan, Mercer’s Chief Markets Officer, said that thus far in
the economic crisis most companies “have refrained from … deep workforce cuts,
across-the-board salary freezes, reductions in defined contribution plan
contributions, or elimination of certain health benefit programs,” but that
these decisions will be reconsidered after corporations look at their year-end
books and worsening business forecasts. It is likely that an intensification of
layoffs and pay cuts will emerge in January.

Another survey conducted in early December by the consulting firm Watson
Wyatt Worldwide Inc. among 117 employers, found that 5 percent had already
reduced salaries as a response to economic crisis and another 6 percent said
they would follow suit in the coming year. On the other hand, 52 percent have
already made job cuts or intend to do so by the end of 2009.

Mass layoffs continue to mount in the US and worldwide. The global
advertising giant Omnicom has announced plans to fire up to 5 percent of its
70,000 global workforce. Two insurance corporations recently announced mass
layoffs: Aetna will cut 3 percent of its workforce of over 36,000, while
Genworth Financial will lay off 1,000 workers, over 13 percent of its
employees. Newell Rubbermaid, a manufacturer of household storage products, has
announced it will cut as much as 10 percent of its salaried labor force and
will put in place a wage and salary freeze for 2009. The hard-drive maker
Western Digital Corp., will eliminate 2,500 jobs, approximately 5 percent of
its global workforce.

The financial services firm Northern Trust Corp. will cut 450 jobs in 2009.
Baldor Electric Co. will eliminate 900 jobs by June. Microcontroller producer
Atmel will purge 11 percent of its workforce in North America, while
pharmaceutical firm Bristol-Myers Squibb will cut 10 percent through 2010,
according to the AP, including 800 immediate layoffs.

The video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. has announced layoffs of 1,000,
about 10% percent of its workforce. One of its rivals in the video game
industry, Midway, will cut 25% of its employees.

OBAMA
HAS FILLED HIS ADMINSTRATION WITH PRIMARILY LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS.

Here’s
his Sec. Labor, HILDA SOLIS:

While
in Congress, she opposed strengthening the border fence, supported expansion of
illegal alien benefits (including driver's licenses and in-state tuition
discounts), embraced sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with federal
homeland security officials to enforce immigration laws, and aggressively championed
a mass amnesty. Solis was steeped in the pro-illegal alien worker organizing
movement in Southern California and was buoyed by amnesty-supporting Big Labor
groups led by the Service Employees International Union. She has now caused a
Capitol Hill firestorm over her new taxpayer-funded advertising and outreach
campaign to illegal aliens regarding fair wages:

*

Michelle
Malkin

The
U.S. Department of Illegal Alien Labor

President
Obama's Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is supposed to represent American workers.
What you need to know is that this longtime open-borders sympathizer has always
had a rather radical definition of "American." At a Latino voter
registration project conference in Los Angeles many years ago, Solis asserted
to thunderous applause, "We are all Americans, whether you are legalized
or not."

That's right. The woman in
charge of enforcing our employment laws doesn't give a hoot about our
immigration laws -- or about the fundamental distinction between those who
followed the rules in pursuit of the American dream and those who didn't.

*

Obama
Administration Challenges Arizona E-Verify Law

The Obama administration has
asked the Supreme Court to strike down a 2007 Arizona law that punishes employers who
hire illegal aliens, a law enacted by then-Governor Janet Napolitano. (Solicitor General's Amicus
Curiae Brief).
Called the “Legal Arizona Workers Act,” the law requires all employers in
Arizona to use E-Verify and provides that the business licenses of those who
hire illegal workers shall be repealed. From the date of enactment, the Chamber
of Commerce and other special interest groups have been trying to undo it,
attacking it through a failed ballot initiative and also through a lawsuit. Now
the Chamber is asking the United States Supreme Court to hear the case (Chamber
of Commerce v. Candelaria), and the Obama Administration is weighing in
against the law.

WHY
NOT FIX THE CAR COMPANIES LIKE WE DO THE FAST FOOD, HOSPITALITY, CONSTRUCTION
AND MEXICAND DRUG CARTEL OPERATIONS IN OUR BORDERS BY SIMPLY FILLING THE JOBS
WITH OBAMA'S LA RAZA PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS?

Plant closings resulting from
Monday’s forced bankruptcy of General Motors will cause spiraling unemployment
and deep cuts in social services in many cities and states across the country.
The Obama administration, whose Auto Task Force dictated the terms of the
bankruptcy, has offered no serious aid to the affected workers and their
communities.

GM is carrying out at least
21,000 job cuts and the closure of 14 plants and warehouses in eight states. In
addition, the company has announced its intention to dump franchise agreements
with 2,300 dealerships by the end of next year. Many of these will be forced to
close, eliminating as many as 100,000 jobs in all 50 states.

The gutting of GM, once the
most powerful corporation in the world and a symbol of US industrial might,
will send shock waves through the economy, cascading into more layoffs at parts
suppliers and financial ruin for thousands of small businesses.

The bankruptcy will immediately
result in state and local cuts in social services, health care and education,
with city and state workers targeted for layoffs, wages cuts and other
concessions. It will accelerate the foreclosure crisis and further drive down
home prices, as tens of thousands of workers are no longer able to meet their
mortgage payments.

The Obama administration is
using the concessions and layoffs, agreed to by the United Auto Workers, to
attack the wages and benefits of the entire working class. Corporations will
take the concessions imposed on auto workers as a signal for similar measures
against their own workers.

The state of Michigan, which
already has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 12.9 percent, will
bear the brunt of the closures, with 42 percent of all national GM layoffs
taking place there. Nearly 9,000 jobs will be lost in Michigan from Monday’s
announced plant closures. The shutdowns are concentrated in southeast Michigan.
They will be carried out in Flint, Livonia, Orion Township, Pontiac and
Ypsilanti Township. On Friday, 700 workers were laid off when GM shuttered a
stamping plant in Grand Rapids, in southwest Michigan.

It is estimated that since
2000, Michigan has lost 17 percent of its jobs—about three quarters of a
million in all—as a direct result of the crisis in the auto industry. Now the
state anticipates 520,000 job losses this year and next.

The consequences for the
state’s limited social welfare system will be disastrous. According to one
estimate, Michigan could lose an additional $18.3 billion in income. It already
faces a $3 billion two-year budget shortfall, and officials recently revised
downward their revenue estimate for the 2010 fiscal year by $1.7 billion,
calling for an across-the-board spending cut of 8 percent.

“It’s clearly going to impact
the safety net,” Governor Jennifer Granholm warned. “People, who are hurting,
need services more, and we have fewer dollars.” Michigan has already carried
out $300 million in budget cuts for the current fiscal year.

Oakland County in suburban
Detroit will lose three factories and 6,600 jobs, the most of any county.
Oakland County was already in difficult financial straits due to declining
property tax revenue, a result of layoffs and the foreclosure crisis. The loss
of GM-related tax revenue will result in layoffs for county workers and sharp
cuts in social programs, said Bob Daddow, Oakland County’s deputy executive. “I
will be going to war,” Daddow told the Detroit News. “We will need to
make cuts in all departments. We have been doing these cuts all along...but the
worst is yet to come on governmental revenues.”

The closure of the GM Truck
and Bus plant will deepen the social crisis in impoverished Pontiac, Michigan.
About 1,100 workers will lose their jobs, and the city will lose 20 percent of
its current tax base, or $10 million, said Fred Leeb, the city’s emergency
financial manager. Leeb made clear that Pontiac’s working class would pay the
price for the shutdown. “We fear that we are going to have to cut even more
deeply,” he told the Detroit News.“And there will be concessions to ask
from the (city) unions.”

Flint, Michigan has lost
about 50,000 GM jobs in 30 years. One thousand more were added to the grim
tally when GM said Monday it would close its Powertrain Flint North plant.
Monday night, the Flint City Council met to enact a series of measures to bridge
a $13 million budget deficit, including the layoff of about 90 firefighters and
police and the shuttering of a fire station.

The city of Livonia, an
inner-ring suburb of Detroit, will lose its GM engine plant, and with it
$474,000 in annual tax revenue, about 1 percent of its total. City workers have
already been asked to accept pay cuts. The Detroit-Livonia-Warren area had an
unemployment rate of 14 percent as of May.

Ypsilanti’s Willow Run
transmission plant laid off 600 workers on Monday, and 500 more jobs will be
shed by December 2010. The township will lose 4.4 percent of its tax revenue,
and Washtenaw County will see a loss of $3.8 million in tax receipts. The
Ypsilanti Public Schools confront a $1.4 million deficit, which will be met
primarily through teacher layoffs. The city faces a budget deficit of almost a
half million dollars.

In Livingston County,
Michigan, the GM bankruptcy may lead to a number of parts suppliers shutting
down. Already hundreds of auto parts workers have lost their jobs in recent
months, according to the county’s Economic Development Council director, Fred
Dillingham. Metaldyne, which employs 100 workers in the county, last week filed
for bankruptcy protection. “We have a number of companies with as much as 90
percent of their business from GM. We have an awful lot of trickle-down effect
from GM,” Dillingham told Livingston Community News.

The closure of GM Mansfield
in Ontario, Ohio is likely to result in the elimination of city jobs and pay
cuts for municipal employees. With revenues already down a quarter million
dollars, the city is bracing for disaster.

Spring Hill, Tennessee, which
has seen its Saturn plant idled, most likely to be closed permanently, was a
single-industry town. When GM opened the plant in 1990, fewer than 1,500 people
lived there. Now it has 24,000 inhabitants.

The collapse of the Big Three
has brought with it a sharp decline in funding for the arts and culture. The
General Motors Foundation, which contributed $31.4 million to the arts in 2007,
has told many art and cultural organizations,“mostly in Detroit,” not to count
on any contributions this year, the Financial Times reported last week.
Toledo, Ohio, recently announced that its three-day jazz festival, the Art
Tatum Jazz Heritage Festival, would be cancelled this year after Chrysler said
it would no longer provide $100,000 in annual funding.

In
the face of this mounting social crisis, President Barack Obama has offered
little more than rhetorical palliatives, telling workers that their “sacrifices”
will ensure the future for coming generations. But for the auto workers’
children, the future foretells poverty amidst a crumbling social safety net.

On
Tuesday, Obama sent Edward Montgomery, his director of recovery for auto
communities and workers, along with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, to tour a
Romulus, Michigan GM plant that thus far has not been slated for closure. This
was followed by Solis’appearance at a “worker round table” at Eastern Michigan
University in Ypsilanti, the ostensible purpose of which was to discuss the
retraining of workers for new jobs in the “green economy.”

The meeting was little more
than a media stunt organized by the Democratic Party and UAW executives to
present the Obama administration as a defender of jobs and divert working class
anger along nationalist lines.

In
her remarks, Solis outlined a series of “job training” programs that will
supposedly equip workers for new high-tech and environmentally-friendly
industries. But as Solis and Obama well know, these token programs cannot
possibly provide decent employment for the vast majority of the workers who are
losing their jobs as a result of the administration’s auto industry policy.

In what is shaping up as the
worst job market since the Great Depression, even college graduates—many with
degrees in engineering, computer science, robotics and management—face the
highest rate of unemployment for those with a four-year degree in decades.

Among the Obama
administration initiatives Solis outlined was $49 million in assistance to
Michigan workers who have lost jobs due to “international trade,”federal
assistance for the weatherization of homes, and summer youth programs. These
are already existing programs. She could not announce any new programs to deal
with the social crisis created by the bankruptcy of GM because the Obama
administration has no plans for such programs.

After Solis spoke, the panel
discussion was turned over to a number of local Democratic Party politicians
and union officials. Don Skidmore, the Willow Run UAW local president, set the
“America first” tone, declaring, “We’ve got to stop the bleeding of American
jobs south of the border!” Another speaker demanded to know why Toledo, Ohio
was able to keep its GM engine plant open.

UAW official Donnie Enersen
denounced immigrant workers. “They’re coming into America, not paying taxes,
not paying into Social Security,” he said.

The union officials are
seeking to divide workers along national and even regional lines, in order to
deflect attention from their real enemies—the Obama administration and the Wall
Street financiers who are behind the carve-up of GM.

TheWorld Socialist Web
Site spoke with a small number of workers, most of whom were recently
retired, who came to the meeting to demonstrate against the closure of the
Willow Run plant. Corky, a GM worker with 12 years, said, “We thought we were
going to stay open until 2010. On Friday when we walked out of work we thought
we would be coming back in mid-July. I got a call from a fellow worker that
night saying we were no longer going to work there.

“It’s unfair. We’ve made
enough sacrifices. I’m tired of it. This was my seventh GM plant. For
two-and-a-half years I was driving down to Toledo, Ohio to work, even when gas
was $4 a gallon. I’ve made sacrifices. My dad is a retired GM worker and his
benefits are being cut. I put my blood and sweat into every transmission that
comes off the line.

“Yesterday when they
announced the bankruptcy and plant closing I was all tears and emotions. Now
I’m angry.”

*

Wsws.org

Underlying
the rise of the financial aristocracy—which exercises control over the entire
political system—is the failure of the world capitalist system as a whole. In
amassing its wealth, this tiny layer of the population, concentrated above all
in the United States, has overseen a vast destruction of industry and social
infrastructure. The ruling classes of every country now openly proclaim that the
maintenance of their system depends upon an unprecedented destruction in the
living conditions of the broad masses of the population.

*

Obama’s
budget and the rot of American capitalism

15
February 2011

On
Monday, the Obama administration released its proposed federal budget for
fiscal year 2012. After committing trillions in federal bailouts to the banks
and billionaires, the White House is demanding cuts that will devastate the
working class, and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sections.

The $1.1 trillion in cuts for
the next decade proposed by the White House is to be only the starting point
for further cuts, as spokesmen for both big business parties acknowledge.
Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat, declared,“We’ve got to do
substantially more than $1 trillion worth of deficit reduction in the next
decade.” Republican House Speaker John Boehner said, “There’s no limit to the
amount we’re willing to cut.”

Democrats and Republicans
agree on gargantuan military spending, an uninterrupted flow of funds to the
financial aristocracy, and continued tax breaks for corporate America and the
wealthy. As a top White House official told the press at a background briefing
on the budget, “The debate in Washington is not whether to cut or to spend. We
both agree we should cut. The question is how we cut and what we cut.”

The Obama budget projects
that the ten-year cumulative deficit will reach a staggering $10.4 trillion. By
attempting to wring such vast sums from the hides of the population, the ruling
elite is trying to set American society back to conditions not seen for
generations.

Programs to be cut include
not only those targeted by Obama and the Republicans in the current budget
debate—home heating assistance, Pell Grants, WIC, Head Start, etc.—but the much
larger entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, which will face cuts
later in the budget process.

The social impact will be
incalculable. As hundreds of thousands of people face the bitter cold of winter
without heat and gas, Obama is proposing halving the grossly inadequate federal
assistance that is available. As students graduate with record debt and no job
prospects, the administration is proposing significant cuts in government aid.
Such gross indifference to social distress is repeated in every sphere.

Significant cuts to Social
Security and Medicare—which amount to denying America’s elderly their right to
pensions and health care—would have an even broader impact.

Behind the “debate” in
Washington and the media over the budget is a massive lie—the claim that the
budget deficits are a product of excessive social spending. Obama’s budget
director Jacob Lew summed up this grotesque falsification an op-ed column
published in the New York Times February 6, under the headline, “The
Easy Cuts Are Behind Us.” Lew claimed that the causes of the projected budget
deficits were “decisions to make two large tax cuts without offsetting them and
to create a Medicare prescription drug benefit without paying for it, combined
with the effects of the recession…”

This list is notable for what
it leaves out: the cost of two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, which runs into
the trillions; and the bank bailouts, where more trillions in public funds were
placed at the disposal of the financial aristocracy, with no questions asked.
The military budget by itself accounts for the lion’s share of the ten-year
deficit: more than $7 trillion of the projected $10 trillion.

Lew’s more fundamental
omission, however, is the grotesque class inequality that pervades American
society. The top one percent of the US population owns over one third of the
country’s wealth. The greatest wealth, however, is concentrated in an even
smaller layer. Indeed, the $1.1 trillion in proposed cuts—which will have a terrible
impact on the lives of millions of people—is somewhat less than the combined
wealth of only the 400 richest Americans.

The arguments presented by
the ruling elite for the cuts are staggeringly hypocritical. As they drown in
floods of cash, they insist that no money is available for workers’ most basic
needs.

Workers must reject this
argument out of hand. They are not responsible for the orgy of swindling and
profiteering that produced the 2008 Wall Street crash and pushed the world
economy into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. On the contrary, an
essential feature of the speculative binge was that the share of national
income received by workers has shrunk to the lowest level in nearly a century.

Underlying
the rise of the financial aristocracy—which exercises control over the entire
political system—is the failure of the world capitalist system as a whole. In
amassing its wealth, this tiny layer of the population, concentrated above all
in the United States, has overseen a vast destruction of industry and social
infrastructure. The ruling classes of every country now openly proclaim that
the maintenance of their system depends upon an unprecedented destruction in
the living conditions of the broad masses of the population.

These measures will provoke
mass opposition. The revolutionary struggles in Egypt—in which protests and
strikes of millions of workers and youth forced the resignation of a US-backed
dictator that ruled the country for more than 30 years—point to the forms of
struggle that will spread worldwide in the coming period. Mass unemployment,
record inequality, and the corruption of the political system are common to
Egypt and the United States, and are in fact universal. At the foundation of
this system is the principle that economic life must be subordinated to private
profit and the maintenance of the wealth of those who control the giant banks
and corporations.

The working class can secure
its interests only through the overturn of the capitalist system as a
whole—that is, the reorganization of economic life to meet social need. In
every aspect of its policies and of its social being, the ruling class itself
makes the case for socialist revolution.